Professional players earn from several streams. Team salaries provide a base, and tournament prize money can be enormous in games with large pools, Dota 2's The International has paid over $40M across a single event.
The leading titles by audience and prestige are League of Legends, whose World Championship draws the largest viewership in esports, and Counter-Strike, whose Majors anchor the tactical-shooter scene. Dota 2 commands attention for its record prize pools, and Valorant has grown rapidly into a major franchised circuit since 2020.
Pick two names from this sport’s all-time list. The larger number in each shared stat is highlighted.
| Stat | Faker (Lee Sang-hyeok) | s1mple (Oleksandr Kostyliev) |
|---|
Tick a point once you could explain it in your own words. Ticks stay on this device.
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Professional players earn from several streams. Team salaries provide a base, and tournament prize money can be enormous in games with large pools, Dota 2's The International has paid over $40M across a single event.
The leading titles by audience and prestige are League of Legends, whose World Championship draws the largest viewership in esports, and Counter-Strike, whose Majors anchor the tactical-shooter scene. Dota 2 commands attention for its record prize pools, and Valorant has grown rapidly into a major franchised circuit since 2020.
By tracked tournament prize money, the top earners are overwhelmingly Dota 2 players, because that game's Internationals feature by far the largest prize pools in esports. Johan 'N0tail' Sundstein, the OG captain who won back-to-back Internationals in 2018 and 2019, long held the record with career earnings above $7M. Several of his OG teammates and other Dota professionals also rank near the top.
South Korea effectively invented modern professional esports. The late-1990s combination of the game StarCraft, a national broadband rollout and PC bang internet-cafe culture created the world's first true esports ecosystem, complete with televised leagues, salaried players and genuine celebrities like BoxeR.
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